Reading: Gregory Maguire, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister

Viewing: Ocean

Moving: Swimming

Learning: Two weeks in a crowded house and you'll dream for it to be over. One week left.

30 December 1999: Beach at last

DMB again could not manage a day off to prepare for her wedding, let alone to come with us, but she dropped us off and picked us up from the beach. We had five blissful hours alone together while Blake screamed alone in the house as JJC and A----- cleaned it for the wedding (for pay, instead of the regular cleaners). I swam. I basked. I read. I drank water. I kept myself covered in SPF 30.

That's all I need. Ocean. Waves. Just a touch of sand in the sandwich, just for nostalgia's sake.

There were three girls building Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the sand. I pranced up to them and asked if I could build Platform 9 and 3/4. They let me. Later I found them an oddly shaped shell that I thought would do well as a magic portrait to guard a secret door.

I called DEDBG from the beach because the seagulls wanted to say hi. I doubt she has a cell phone or gets calls from them often because she thought calling from the beach was pretty cool. I asked her what she and SPG were making for their New Year's Eve dinner and she rattled off several French dishes whose ingredients I could just grasp. Then she said, "But I'm only making stuff I can do off the top of my head."
"Darling peanut, the only things I can make off the top of my head are pancakes and chocolate chip cookies."
"Mmmm, and those are good cookies too."

I had played in the water long enough that later in the afternoon I was worried about my tender Irish skin and maybe I was a bit cold though I'd never confess that, so I snuggled in my chair under a towel and read Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister. DMB called to say she was ten minutes away as I finished the last paragraph, which is what I call good timing.

When we got back, we didn't speak because as soon as Blake heard our voices he'd probably scream. We tiptoed in and paused by the stair, under our bedroom door. JJC and A----- had cleaned the house all day and we hoped he hadn't made the day too miserable for them. The day before, when we went out with my father and Sheryl, we covered him; today we experimented with uncovered. And what's this? We cocked our ears like the Grinch hearing the sound that didn't sound sad but glad. Whistling and singing (or what passes for song for Blake)! Whew. But wait, whence did that sound come? Not from upstairs--from the family room! Taz had learned Blake's chatters, whistles, and tunes.

The whole theory was that Blake might be inspired to speech and Taz might learn to snuggle. Instead, Blake had taught an African Gray, brain the size of a planet (just the Little Prince's planet, though), to talk like a cockatiel. And shriek like a cockatiel.